A commentary by a Nanaimo journalist.
Turning the RCMP into a federal investigative service, and away from street-level law enforcement, would be a bad deal for B.C. communities that have relied on the Mounties for policing for nearly 75 years.
Ottawa might have its own motives for contemplating such a sea change, but within B.C. there is no valid reason to turf the RCMP. The result would be the return to a provincial police service, a patchwork of municipal departments, or the chaos of both.
Either way, the cost of such a shift would be immense. There is no doubt that the current cost of RCMP contract-policing beats the alternative.
If B.C. and its local governments were to be forced to fund a provincial police service, or start new municipal departments, small cities like Nanaimo and Prince George, for example, would see property taxes, which spiked into high single-digit increases this year, rise exponentially into the double digits and never come down again.
Provincial and community leaders better start not only sharpening their pencils to calculate the adverse economics of such a potential move, but separate fact from fiction about the RCMP. They need to be prepared for a possible fight to keep contract policing.
The Victoria and Vancouver regions, where municipal policing is well established, present a different problem. Policing costs in those regions could be brought into line by what many see as, to quote Bugs Bunny, “fightin’ woids”: creating single regional police services.
In the Capital Regional District, as observed many times before, it makes no sense to have four municipal police departments and three RCMP detachments. Rising population and density across the CRD only increase the complications in maintaining separate police services.
In the Lower Mainland, after all the drama of the past months in Surrey, we should not be surprised if one day we see the recently established Surrey police service integrated into a single Metro Vancouver police service.
But in B.C.’s less densely populated areas there is no imperative, economic or otherwise, to end RCMP contract policing. No models have surfaced showing that B.C. communities would be better served and at lower cost by provincial or municipal police.
Outside of the Victoria or Vancouver regions only one B.C. city, Nelson, has its own police service. Laying out the masses of cash that would be required to reacquire the resources the RCMP brings — from air services to dog training — would be a vast boondoggle.
If there is an economic advantage to ending contract policing in B.C. it perhaps lies east of the Rockies, in Ottawa. Mandarins there may think that B.C. communities are getting too good a deal and would rather shift those resources into something with a greater utility (to them) and higher return on investment.
The only way B.C. might consider scrapping the RCMP would be if Ottawa gives a poison pill in the form of extortionate cost increases for renewed contract services.
If for now replacing the RCMP in B.C. is not necessary on economic grounds, at least not from a B.C. perspective, then others may argue there are political reasons to shift away from the Mounties.
Grousing and complaining about the RCMP in B.C. is something a provincial sport. But as with the economic angle, there is no conclusive evidence that incompetency or ineptitude within the Mounties is such that the best solution is to boot them out.
RCMP training remains among the best in the world; and resourcing, though challenging, has not dipped to critical levels. Could morale among rank and file officers be better? Probably. But the vast majority of RCMP officers still do their work effectively and communities remain well served.
Those who point to various scandals, missteps, and errors in the RCMP need to distinguish between problems in policing in general and those peculiar to the RCMP.
Police services in the United Kingdom and the United States are also under immense pressure to reform after scandals and serious missteps. A new policing structure for B.C. would bring not only many of the same problems attributed to the RCMP, but possibly new and more intractable ones.
Other complaints about the RCMP: Its officers are exempt from the provincial policing discipline process; the use of so called Mr. Big stings; their historic role in the residential school system. These and more need to be acknowledged and addressed, and some have, but none amount to valid grounds to replace the RCMP in B.C.
Finally, there is the concern about who the RCMP answer to. That politically loaded question has only one sensible answer: The officer in the execution of her or his duty answers only to the law.
After that, the question of whether Mountie managers ought to be beholden to Ottawa or Victoria depends on how democratic power is being used or abused in each capital. That is a debate with no right answer.
As Canadians we love to be sentimental about our red-clad Mounties. But we also know when to get serious about money and maintaining law and order.
Jettison the sentimentality, for both Mounties and made-in-B.C. cops, and keeping the RCMP in B.C. is the only sensible conclusion.
